What is Linus up to right now?

This is my now page. I treat it as a checkin with myself, revisiting it every so often to see if I have the right focus.

Last updated May 1 2024. Related to, but not the same as, my life todo list.

There's family, of course

The family is centered these days! And as they say - a family in harmony means a happy dad. (Maybe "they" don't say that, but "they" should.)

Sam has had a great first year in school. After a rocky start, he's found lots of friends. We've also found a good rythm when it comes to physical activity. He used to sit still a lot, but nowadays we're out playing football and bouldering together.

Lily is one years old. That's just insane. We've discovered that she's an escape artist. Sam used to keep track of us and never ventured too far away, but Lily just... runs. Away. Laughing. She wants to do everything Sam does. It's a joy to see.

Jule and I are working on finding quality time for each other inbetween house work, family, creative projects and work. We've found a lot of activities we both appreciate. I still don't know what I've done to deserve her. She's just so fantastic. One thing that we'll tackle over the coming year is her work situation. She's just been transferred to a new team that is known to overwork their people. We need to make sure she avoids that.

Work starts up again

Been on parental leave for half a year and just got back to work. I'm still an engineering manager at IKEA. I enjoy it more than when I left, but that is mostly because my team has finally gotten a good momentum going. When I was away they reorganised the company, which opened up for us to hand over responsibilities to other teams. This is something I prepared quite a bit before I left, and the other team members picked that ball up and ran with it. Quite proud of that.

It became clear during parental leave, however, that I need to have a timeline on this job. I am at heart a creative, and when I get too far away from the doing I'm not my happiest. I'll continue being a manager for the foreseeable future, but am planning my next steps.

I still want to be creative

My parental leave has been full of creative work. One of the most fun things is an adventure I embarked on with my oldest friend, Johannes. He has developed a party game, where he collects a bunch of controversial statements that starts conversations. Together we've built an app version of that. You'll soon find Kontroversiellt in an app store near you!

That means that my own game, You're a dad, has been on pause. I'm itching to get back to it, but can only have one project per type running at a time.

I've built one of my best LEGO models of all time - The Crescent. I liked it so much that I made my first video in 10 years about it.

It was a lot of fun - I want to do more videos in the coming years. I've been doing a lot of LEGO/wood fusion projects. Maybe about one of them? It's a great way to practice storytelling.

On the topic of wood, I just finished a new dining table for the family. I should document that. It will not be a video, but I'm still pretty proud of the fact that I managed to go from dumpster dived damaged oak into a finished table that looks pretty good.

Other than that, the usual: learning more tools, building and fixing stuff around the house, having more project ideas than time. Speaking of which, I also need to finish a book about our latest DnD campaign...

Let's just move on.

Other personal stuff

I'm pretty okay with calling myself a maker nowadays. That was something I wanted to get to a year ago, so I'm happy about that.

Other than that, summer and daylight is finally coming to Sweden. I always forget the impact sunlight has on your mood. I took vitamin D this winter, and it helped maintain the mood. I'll continue doing so going forward.

I'm turning 40 this year. I don't feel particularly excited or scared about that.